I am just hearing about the concordance table. It is like telling runners they have to run a hundred yards and then after the 100 yards the judges say “oops”, it was supposed to be 150 yards. We will determine your time for 150 yards based on how fast you went for 100 yards. It is completely unfair to hold them to a standard they were not given an opportunity to work towards. I am trying to figure out how the “new” SAT is being considered by college admissions.
I don’t get your analogy at all.
They will probably be based on the percentile results, just like previous concordance information was.
@“Erin’s Dad” From what I have seen, the percentiles don’t match up. I believe that people should stop deciding how good a New SAT score is based on the old SAT. It’s a new test, which means new scales, and also means that there has to be a new mindset.
For example: when you heard a 2100 on the old SAT, you didn’t equate that to a 32 on ACT to figure out if it’s good. Those with enough knowledge knew 2100 was good. We shouldn’t equate the new SAT to old to figure out how ‘good’ the score is. In time, everyone will get used to the change.
The College Board created a controversy by comparing the redesigned SAT to the old SAT. Randomly deducting points from the scores on the redesigned test discredits the accomplishments of the students. CB moved the finish line after the race.
Can you explain this? Or link to an article?
From what I have heard/seen, the top schools that I have spoken to are not using the concordance tables. They are looking at each test individually and focusing more on the percentile achievements.
I’ve made/seen many posts regarding this. In short, though, the percentile/scores don’t match up.
Part of it is that the College Board changed their definition of percentile. Search for “percentile inflation” and there’s a good article related to PSAT percentiles on a blog I can’t link to.
That is a flawed approach. If College Board can’t get it right, the likelihood that individual colleges can is quite small.
I’ve heard some adcoms say they will concord old SATs to new SATs. I’m sure with the number of colleges out there, there will be a lot of ways of dealing with this year’s quirks.
I’m not sure what you mean by “flawed”. The private Unis I spoke to all use holistic admissions criteria. Therefore, these schools can choose to weight or emphasise SAT scores as much or as little as they wish. For these schools the concordance tables are neither relevant nor being used.
Public Unis are probably a different issue.
The point is not how they choose to weight SATs, but if they choose to weight it at all, whether they are doing so fairly.
You cannot just assume that each test’s cohort of students is equally talented, which is they key condition required to allow just comparing percentiles across test dates.
The Washington Post article by Nick Anderson, May 11th. Jack Buckley of the College Board compared the concordance tables to converting Celsius and Fahrenheit. Not the same thing at all!
In my research for the schools my son is considering, public and private this is not true.
@garden9 ^ can you please clarify what you meant above with “this is not true.” Thanks
sorry, I was replying to your post regarding public vs.private colleges and their use of the tables. I have found a
wide variety in the use of the tables in private colleges.
Thanks. I have yet to see any private schools who are using the concordance tables.
@londondad where would you actually “see this”? Are colleges posting on their sites if/how they are using concordance for SAT to compare students who sent old vs students who sent new?
Harvard adcom at a 5-college hotel presentation said they plan to us the concordance tables to concord old SATs to new SATs. Other adcoms there (Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, UPenn) said they didn’t know yet for sure.
I doubt colleges will post this info on their websites. They seemed evasive even when asked the question in that setting.
It will not surprise me if colleges get big batches of the new SAT and wonder why there are so few concording over 2300 and then come to their own conclusions/concordance.